In medieval Europe, society was structured more along social class lines and social class at that time was based on descent. Therefore descent was more important than ethnicity in matters of politics. You can see it on European nobility been obsessed with their descent, they tried to prove their ancestor was this or that figure sometimes even at the cost of falsifying their family tree.

Also there might have been simple human psychology in play: European nobility was jealous one. Why should XY rule, why not me? What better is he than I am? So rather of choosing one from among us, we choose somebody from outside. Sort of if I can not have it, nobody will logic. That is what Primary Chronicle suggest: Slavs were fighting among themselves for power, then they agreed to invite foreigner.

The whole concept is interesting and strikes me as a very enlightened one. To forget the petty loyalties of nationalism to look for a truly good leader regardless of his nationality.

Ivan I was Grand Prince of Moscow, and is considered the person who started to gather the 'Russian lands' together.

Ivan IV (the Terrible) is the first person crowned Tsar, but the title had emerged over the previous hundred years or so, and I think the motivation for adopting the new title was to claim continuty with the Roman/Byzantine tradition of emperor (Tsar ultimately being derived from Caesar).

Remember Constantinople had fallen in the preceding century and the 'seat' of the Orthodox church was up for grabs, so succesive Russian leaders would have done all it could to try to seize the power and the glory of being the 'new Rome', including the adoption of a title roughly equivalent with 'emperor'.

Ivan IV taking the new title Tsar of All The Russians was basically a consolidation of power.

The whole concept is interesting and strikes me as a very enlightened one. To forget the petty loyalties of nationalism to look for a truly good leader regardless of his nationality.

Perhaps we have gone backwards in that respect.

I would not idealise that old world It certainly did not lacked petty (sometimes not so petty like in case of 100 years war -another good example that ethnicity did not played such large role back then) squabbles. They just were not based on nationality but on other things.

I would also not like to live in a society which is structured on descent. If you are born to wrong family, and most people were, you had very little prospect in life. People by concentrating on bad sides of nationalism often forgot good things it brought: political ans social equality, religious freedom, general suffrage, citizenship and other things which we now take for granted but which did not exist before concept of political nationalism.

Primary sources, especially from this era, are not infallible. History was more about story-telling than precisely recounting the past as it happened. The Primary Chronicle has been scrutinized by scholars, especially Russian scholars, over the claims made about the Rus' being Vikings, instead arguing that the Rus were Slavs.

This is the exact part of the Primary Chronicle that's been at the center of the dispute:

Quote:

The Slavs, the tributaries, of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves. There was no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against another. They said to themselves: "Let us seek a prince who may rule over us, and judge us according to the law." They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Rus: these particular Varangians were known as Rus, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans, Angles, and Goths, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, and the Krivichians then said to the people of Rus: "Our whole land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us." They thus selected three brothers, with their kinfolk, who took with them all the Rus, and migrated. The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, in Beloozero; and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk. On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgorod became known as Russian (Rus) land. The present inhabitants of Novgorod are descended from the Varangian race, but aforetime they were Slavs.

So the Slavic inhabitants asked the Viking Rus to rule over them. As I said before, many Russian scholars have criticized this account, noting that the Rus were Slavs not Vikings. For a basic overview of this issue: Rus' people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now do you agree the Primary Chronicle is correct in telling how the Russian state began? Were the Vikings invited to rule over the Slavs?

This is widely quoted quote from Primary Chronicle. But what it has to do with nonsense written by Antonina? Where are Cossacks, Ukrainians, Ruthenians which founded Kiev. I do not speak now of right of wrong Norman theory. I speak about the alternative history which someone tries to advance here.